Bill, Joe and Friz sound off pt 2

Hear the radical thoughts of 3 of the most conservative directors from the golden age of animation!

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/biography-john-k-interviews-bill-joe.html

Animation School Lesson 5 - Line Of Action, Silhouettes

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/meta-100000-animation-drawing-course_31.html
Click the link to get a nice big hi rez version of the page above.

Hi students. You've been doing great on the construction lessons, so now it's time to learn another important principle: Line of Action.

This principle is different than construction in that it is not based on tangible reality.
Everything in real life has construction.
Line of action is an artistic concept that sometimes by accident happens in real life but not always.

BUT! It is an important tool for artists.

Line of action helps your poses "read". It makes them clear and understandable and gives them a distinct non-ambiguous direction.



Here are some examples of strong line-of-action in the poses from classic cartoons.
Lines of action can be obvious and exaggerated as in this pose above from Kitty Kornered and the one below of Tinkerbell.

Note how the details follow the line of action and don't go in opposite directions.Here above is a more subtle line of action in the body pose of Wart, the character from Sword In The Stone. Look how the artist combines solid construction with a flowing line of action to create a solid and clear easy to read attitude.
When drawing your line of action-use another principle to help the line of action read even more clearly.

SILHOUETTE: See how the frame above combines construction, line of action and clear silhouettes to make an easy to read composition-even without having any details in the drawings.

How do you get a clear silhouette?
By using NEGATIVE SHAPES.
See the empty spaces between the arms and legs and major forms in the drawings above? Those are negative shapes. They are as important to your drawing as the positive shapes. They help make the silhouette read.


All the drawings above-the Preston Blair page, the Clampett frames and the Disney drawings are using the same basic principles. They superficially look different in style but to the trained eye, only slightly different.

The Clampett drawings are looser and more flowing and rounder, while the Disney drawings are more angular-but they all use the eaxct same fundamental principles.

Today, sadly these fundamentals have mostly disappeared.

Most cartoon characters now are rigid, they stand straight up and down, have no clear silhouettes, no construction, no line of action and no design at all. Characters now look like pieces of broken glass that don't fit together and certainly don't flow around the forms and line of action of the characters.



But you can do better.

Copy all the Preston Blair poses-using the same methods you did the construction drawings and then check them in photoshop against the originals to see where you are off.

Then when you are getting close to getting those accurate, try copying the Clampett and Disney drawings.

Beautiful People 19 - from memory

Usually I draw my caricatures out of the tabloids, like these 2 below.

While waiting for Eddie to arrive at my favorite pizza place-Lido's in Van Nuys, I doodled up these folk from memory.







You get a different kind of caricature when you draw from memory, maybe more cartoony and more of the essence of the person, because you are not distracted by a lot of details in the photographs.

If you saw the show on Sunday, then post a comment down below this post!

THE BIG SHOW IS TODAY!

Sunday!
YOU GOT YOUR ASSES DOWN THERE!
TO MEET ME, KATIE, VINCENT, LUKE AND MANY SPUMCO BIGSHOTS!



CARTOONS, ART SHOW, NETWORKING, AUTOGRAPHS AND ALL KINDS OF FUN CRAP!


MORE INFO:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/john-k-retrospective-may-28-santa.html
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/gallery-and-original-john-and-katie.html
Now write up a report on this blog to tell everyone how much fun you had!
Rub it in for the folks who couldn't make it.

What did you think of the clips from the Lost Episodes of Ren and Stimpy coming out in July?

And what happened to you, Sabrina?

George Liquor Stories - John and Katie presentations

The other day we had to go pitch our ideas for web cartoons so Katie and I spent a day drawing these full color presentation boards from some of the cartoon ideas I told you about earlier.

As you all know, in my cartoons you can tell the different styles that each cartoonist has, because I encourage creativity. Katie and I have similar styles of course, but she has the feminine version and I have the manly one.
I wonder if you can tell which drawings she did and which I did.
Hopefuly your eyes haven't been blunted by watching too many of those godawful "on-model" stick-figure shows.
BTW, here's a link to the stories so you can see that it might be possible to have eye pleasing art and funny stories at the same time-a radical concept, right?
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/04/george-liquor-stories-3-fast-food-lust.html
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/04/george-liquor-stories-4-heaven-and.html
How are your eyes doing? Are they waking up somewhat?
How would you like to see this kind of stuff on your media boxes of every kind?
I have a concept for those folks who think that ugly drawings must automatically be accompanied by good writing-or how did it get on TV?: I think then for your tastes, you should only have sex with ugly girls who can only make 3 expresssions, because pretty ones will distract from the pleasure happening in your rude parts.

Then you can boast to your friends with the pants falling off that she's ugly on purpose and just the right kind of ugly to put across the mess.
So have you figured out which drawings were done by Katie and which by me?

Come down to meet us Sunday and find out!
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/gallery-and-original-john-and-katie.html

Fan caricatures 1

Here's some folks with taste that ordered caricatures from me:

Brianna-daughter of the Famous Aimee!

http://aimees-sketchblog.blogspot.com/

Bo

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=53167066&MyToken=17bfac10-3415-43e4-b437-929d13516ceb


If you have received yours yet, post it and I'll link to you.

Tell me in the comments!

When Cartoons Evolved 3 - First Bugs Bunnies

Here's the first Bugs Bunny cartoon - made by "Bugs" Hardaway and Cal Dalton in 1938.Here he is in a typical calm Bugs Bunny pose.
Here he is laughing the Woody Woodpecker laugh 2 years before Woody was created.

..still doing magic.

This cartoon is basically a remake of Porky's Duck Hunt with some proto Bugs traits just starting to emerge. He's kinda like Daffy Duck-really wacky but with some underplayed scenes that predict Bugs' future.

Here's Chuck Jones using the early proto Bugs in a cartoon from 1938 Presto Changeo
He's not the star of the cartoon and is basically a magician's rabbit.


Here's another Hardaway and Dalton Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare-um Scare-um - 1939.
His design is starting to look like the Bugs we all know. His voice is sort of like the retarded early Barney Rubble.
A typical Bugs Bunny routine.
Here he is invoking mock sympathy - making fun of pathos. A very Warner Bros. type of irreverence-very anti-Disney.



To remind you of an important point I made last post: In the old days, artists evolved their ideas constantly. The character designs would change from cartoon to cartoon, director to director and in some cartoons, from scene to scene!

These 3 cartoons here represent 18 minutes of Bugs Bunny's development-that's less than a half hour cartoon. Today's cartoons are frozen in time. They barely change at all over 100s of half hours. The world is opposed to creativity today.

70 years ago, creativity and rapid progress were just taken for granted.

You have to be raised in an uncreative environment in order to blindly accept how bland everything is today.

The difference between a generation that grew up in the 1930s and a generation that has grown up in the 70s or later is stark.

When my parents first saw some modern prime-time cartoons they said instantly: "I can draw better than that." That should be the obvious conclusion.

Here, Evan has provided proof that modern cartoons evolve:

Year 1




10 years later.

John K. Retrospective May 28 -Santa Monica

http://www.fandango.com/MoviePage.aspx?date=5/28/2006&mid=97056

Hey folks! Come meet me, Katie and other Spumco artists and see all our banned cartoons-too hot for TV!

Look at this shit we have for you...

Naked Beach Frenzy

Bakshi's Mighty Mouse

in a take-off of Alvin and The Chipmunks!

Look at this cool girl scene by Lynne Naylor!
And below is a bit from some scenes that were originally cut and I put them back for you!

He Hog MTV Pilot - adult version

Bjork-Uncut!


Boo Boo Runs Wild-Uncut!

Life Sucks Animatic-Ren and Stimpy and the Children's Crusade

Weekend Pussy Hunt 12

What Pee Boners Are For-starring Slab 'N' Ernie-Michael Jackson's favorite cartoon!

The Aero Theatre is located at 1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica.

May. 28: 6:30 p.m.

Box office: 323-466-3456

http://www.fandango.com/MoviePage.aspx?date=5/28/2006&mid=97056

the Box Office is open 2 hours prior to show time, tickets are $6 for American Cinematheque Members, $ 7 for Sudent/Senior and $9 General
See you there!